Rich's Birthday Hike in the Everglades

 

This morning Travalon and I went to a very crowded Mass two minutes from our hotel because we got up too late to join the Madison crew in Ave Maria. We did join them for lunch afterwards, then we had wanted to treat Richard Bonomo to an airboat ride for his birthday, but it was a very windy day so the airboat places said it wasn't safe to go out. Now as my regular readers know, usually I help throw extravagant themed parties for Rich's birthday, since we all needed an excuse to do something fun during this gloomy wintertime. But down in south Florida we don't need a party to cheer up - we just went for a hike in the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge! It looked like a jungle.

Then Travalon and I headed south and east through the Everglades. We found a boardwalk with a lot of people on it, and it was heaven for bird nerds like us. Check out this little blue heron!

I really don't know what this is - it looks kind of like an anhinga, but its head and neck are black, not golden brown.

Here is a little green heron, just like the one we see off our dock every summer.

And an air plant in bloom! These are bromeliads, the same family as the pineapple.

I have no idea what these are - immature anhingas?

And we saw alligators.

The anhinga makes me think of a dragon with its sharp beak and bright blue eyes.

We don't have anhingas back home, but we do have cormorants like this.

We don't have alligators back home either. They're so primitive-looking.

The cormorant is looking down on us.

Here is the anhinga again. I just love its bright blue eyes!

And of course the alligator again.

And the anhinga again, or maybe another one. There were several there.

Here is a really big alligator that was just below us.

And I will just keep posting photos of the anhinga because it's so cool.

Now the alligator looks like he's coming for us. Yikes!

The little green heron has a lot of colors on it. Check it out.

A woman with a camera told me this is called a tricolor heron. She and another guy and Travalon were all taking photos of the little green heron at the same time, so that it looked like a celebrity with paparazzi following it.

And this is the strange bird that looks like an all-black anhinga. I'll have to do some research. I saw it swim too, and only its head and neck were sticking out of the water.

Here is another little blue heron.

Then we stopped by the Shark Valley Visitors' Center of the Everglades National Park. We got there just before they were going to close the gates, and nobody was there to charge us for entering, so we drove in for just a few minutes. Here is a tricolor heron.

And there were several egrets. Some were larger with green around their eyes.

This looks like another tricolor heron.

There were also smaller egrets with yellow around their eyes and something of a crest on their heads, which are not like the ones I've seen in Wisconsin in the summer.

Here is the larger one again. It also has a yellow beak, while the smaller one has a black beak.

And of course, as we were leaving, we saw an alligator.

I forgot to mention that, when we went to lunch with our neighbor, a guy with a two-foot alligator stopped by and told us how he slept with her in his bed. After he left, our neighbor said, "That was very Florida." I guess he was the proverbial Florida Man. He looked like an old hippie.

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